Turning up the crazy knob

It’s my theory that the entire human race is one bad decision or major life event away from being total nut jobs. I’m pretty sure that we’re all destined to be residents of Crazy Town at some point in life in our lives; some of us are just passing through while others arrive early, settle in and put in a change of address card. There’s no doubt that life is crazy and, lucky for me, sometimes it’s just crazy enough to be funny.

It seems to me that things are just getting crazier every day; it’s almost like somebody cranked up the “crazy knob” a few notches. As a student of whacky behavior and a writer with a limited capacity for original thought, I’m more than happy to keep you filled in on bizarre stuff from around the world.

There has been a recent rash of naked old man sightings in the United States, which is probably better than sighting naked old men with a rash, but that’s not the story. There were two cases reported this week involving old guys ending up in court for public nudity. It looks like another fad has started and, once again, I missed the memo.

These guys aren’t your traditional trench coat wearing flashers; they’re more like nudists with a poor sense of personal boundaries. One was a 77 year-old sun worshiper from Utah who enjoyed lounging naked in his backyard. The other was a retiree from North Carolina who walks around in the buff in his own home.

This doesn’t sound all that crazy until you learn that the backyard where the Utah nudist was lounging is adjacent to a church parking lot where young Sunday school students had full view of his sagging splendor through a chain link fence. Before pleading guilty to lewd behavior, he told the court that he thought he could do whatever he wanted to in the privacy of his own backyard … which might have been a valid defense if there had been any privacy in his backyard.

Meanwhile our naked friend in North Carolina created an uproar in his neighborhood for standing in his front door wearing only his wrinkled birthday suit and a defiant smile. The court dismissed the charges against him saying that he had the right to be naked in his own home and, since he never stepped outside, he never broke the law. Tell that to the girl scouts who came to his door selling cookies; they’ll probably suffer from PTSD whenever they see a box of Thin mints for the rest of their lives!

It’s difficult to determine the craziest part of this story —that a 77 year-old man actually believed that a chain link fence provided privacy, that it’s OK for anyone to stand in full public view in North Carolina or that these guys never figured out that no one should ever see an old guy naked (which is why I’ve removed the mirrors from my bathroom.) The whole thing is nuts!

The insanity is rampant and global:

A woman in Idaho saw a falcon attack a duck and felt compelled to save the duck because she is an animal lover. She subsequently beat the falcon to death with a beaded scarf, the preferred weapon of humanitarian animal lovers. It’s not clear whether the duck died of wounds suffered during the falcon attack or the rescue attempt.

The government of Thailand recently passed strict laws prohibiting women from taking “under-boob selfies” claiming such photos are immoral. No new laws have been passed to restrict Thailand’s multi-million dollar international sex tourism trade.

The Pakistani police set up roadblocks and deployed helicopters to track down and arrest a nude biker racing through the streets of Islamabad. These are the same Pakistani police who didn’t notice Bin Laden living there for over seven years.

Does any of this make sense or has the crazy knob really been turned up? I Googled that question and found out there’s a perfectly good reason for the increased whacky behavior around the world. We are in the final degrees of the zodiac cycle, there will be a full solar eclipse during the new moon at the spring equinox while Saturn is in retrograde and we’re in the final phase of the Pluto and Uranus square cycle. Yikes!

I have no idea what any of that means but I’m pretty sure that it’s “astro-speak” for turning up the crazy knob. Brace yourself!

Rick Seley is an award-winning humor columnist. He may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.